Fourteen boxes are piled in front of my desk, stacked around me like a cardboard fort. Inside one is a Form Studio 1, the new, affordable, consumer-focused 3D printer Formlabs just announced.
David Lakatos, chief product officer at the 3D printer manufacturer, assured me that the Form Studio 1 has a very economical size. “It doesn't take a lot of space,” Lakatos said. “If you have a desk, then I think you should be good to go.” I have a desk. It’s covered in boxes sent by his company.
Formlabs is one of the biggest 3D printer producers, with nearly 200,000 printers in service. The company’s customers are primarily professional businesses, like assembly shops or dentists, able to shell out $2,500 or more for a printer. (Its last affordable printer was $2,300.)
But the Form Studio 1 is Formlabs’ first consumer-oriented device. It prints with SLA (stereolithography) resins—a common 3D printing material that hardens into solid plastic when exposed to ultraviolet light—and can use Formlabs-branded products or third-party resins. It costs $699 and is now on sale; individual resin bottles start at $29.
Courtesy of Formlabs
The Studio 1 takes up roughly the same space as a minifridge. You’ll also likely need a wash unit, sold separately for $199 with a similar footprint (it removes uncured liquid resin from the surface of models). Then you’ll need room for all the tools and resin cartridges. Getting all that stuff can pile up. Or at least it did when Formlabs sent more than a dozen boxes to the WIRED office for testing. Your pileage may vary.
The front touchscreen lets you troubleshoot and ready prints. When the printer starts, it’s relatively quiet and odor-free. 3D printing with resin can be stinky, but Formlabs-branded resins are UL GreenGuard–certified, the same standard used to ensure baby products aren’t harmful from skin contact or off-gassing. Lakatos says the idea is that the Studio 1 can be used anywhere without the room being overwhelmed by resin stank.
“We know that some people are going to put it in their bedrooms,” Lakatos says. “I don't sleep with my printers, but you could if you really wanted to.”
After going through the stack of boxes, I set up the Form Studio 1 and the Form Studio Wash+Cure. They’re stylish, with translucent orange cases that conjure old-school iMac aesthetics. The printing process itself is supposedly quick. Lakatos says you can print a casing for a Raspberry Pi setup in around eight minutes.
Courtesy of Formlabs
I’ve only printed a couple of things so far, but have had a good experience with the orders. (Full review coming soon.) I printed a clear cover for the toolbox that comes with the Studio 1. It took about 17 minutes and came out clean and intact. The process was relatively quiet. The resin smell was there, but really only when lifting the hood after the process was done. I’m excited to use it more and see what kind of very detailed unholy abominations I can make.
The SLA printing enables very detailed constructions. In Formlabs’ internal testing, the company says it has had a roughly 2 percent failure rate for its prints. If that holds in the real world, it’ll be a big jump over competitors. That’s if you use its own resins, though.
“You can use any material,” Lakatos says. “If you want to use the toxic resin on Amazon, you can do it. We don't recommend it, but you can do it.”
Formlabs also has an app called Form Mobile that can control prints or send designs to the Form Studio 1. The overall printer experience feels surprisingly straightforward.
“It’s great if you want to mess around with some stuff,” Lakatos says. “For serious, beautiful things and projects that really require better material properties, beautiful resolution, stuff like that—it's hard to compete with it.”